Troubles at women's prison test Alabama

Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women inmate Monica Washington is shown with her two children, the youngest of whom was born as a result of a sexual assault at the Wetumpka, Ala., prison.

Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women inmate Monica Washington is shown...

WETUMPKA, Ala. — For a female inmate, there are few places worse than the Julia Tutwiler Prison for Women.

Corrections officers have raped, beaten and harassed women inside the aging prison here for at least 18 years, according to an unfolding Justice Department investigation. More than a third of the employees have had sex with prisoners, which is sometimes the only currency for basics like toilet paper and tampons.

But Tutwiler, where conditions are so bad that the federal government says they are most likely unconstitutional, is only one of the troubled prisons in a state system that has the second-highest number of inmates per capita in the U.S.

Now, as Alabama faces federal intervention and as the Legislature is weighing its spending choices for the coming year, it remains an open question whether the recent reports on Tutwiler are enough to prompt reform.

“Yes, we need to rectify the crimes that happened at Tutwiler, but going forward it's a bigger problem than just Tutwiler,” said state Sen. Cam Ward, a Republican from Alabaster who is chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “We're dealing with a box of dynamite.”

The solution, Ward and others say, is not to build more prisons but to change the sentencing guidelines that have filled the prisons well beyond capacity.

Over half the state's prisoners are locked up for drug and property crimes, a rate for nonviolent offenses among the highest in the nation.

Still, in many corners of Alabama, a state where political prominence is often tied to how much a candidate disparages criminals, the appetite for change remains minimal.

The Legislature is in the middle of its budget session, working over a document from Gov. Robert Bentley that includes $389 million for the state's prisons — about $7 million less than last year.

Alabama prisons are running at almost double capacity, and staffing is dangerously low, said Kim T. Thomas, the department's commissioner.

The federal government has stepped in to fix Alabama's prison problems before, but it has been years since the state has faced a situation as serious as that uncovered by a series of damning investigations into Tutwiler.

Monica Washington, who is serving 20 years for armed robbery, said she had been raped by a prison guard and gave birth to a daughter who is now 3 and living with relatives near Montgomery.

The guard, Rodney Arbuthnot, served six months in jail for custodial sexual misconduct. He has since moved to Texas. The courts only recently tracked him down, and the family is finally getting about $230 a month in child support.

In a telephone interview, Washington said that prisoners were still fearful and that conditions remained bad.

“Right now, for me personally, it's still the same as far as the officers,” she said. “It's like an act of Congress to get the things you need just to live. It's inhumane for inmates to be here, period.”